Size Matters
Small ground drones are--so far--toys with niche capabilities
I'm not impressed with small unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) except for their role in very tactical situations so humans aren't the first through the door or into the trench.
Ukraine wants a lot of robots to make up for manpower shortages:
The Zmiy, or “snake”, is one of dozens of Ukrainian-made robots helping Kyiv replace soldiers with machines.
Guided by a pilot in a bunker a few miles away, it doesn’t slither like its reptile namesake – it silently crawls low to the ground, detonating Russian mines in its path.
The model is one of several that will make up the 15,000 robots that Kyiv has pledged to deploy to the battlefield this year in an effort to help overcome its crippling manpower shortages at the front, where Ukrainian troops are outgunned and often outmanned by Russians at a rate of three-to-one.
But these small robots are suited to static warfare, really, because they don’t have to travel far. But that kind of shallow impact is not going to be decisive even if it increases kill ratios and saves friendly lives. It's just static warfare done more efficiently. Which risks false compassion, as I've called it:
As I wrote in 1997--and presented to a largely Army audience that year--about such false compassion as applied to the Army, citing Iraq's force protection obsession (from fear rather than compassion in that case):
Our soldiers' lives are indeed valuable, and our country's insistence that we minimize risks to them is laudable (as well as being necessary due to the small size of the Army). Undue concern, however, is false compassion and, as was the case for Iraq in 1980, could result in even greater casualties in a prolonged war should we refuse - because of the prospect of battle deaths - to seize an opportunity for early victory.
I also doubt that UGVs save manpower as much as it moves it from the front to the drone units behind the lines. How much manpower formerly on the front will be needed to support the UGVs fighting on the front? And while being behind the lines is no doubt safer than being on the front, if the front is too thinly manned the enemy will break that front. Then what happens to the drone units? They run or they die is what happens. At the least, as we see every day now in Ukraine, even small, poorly executed Russian attacks push the Ukrainians back a little bit because Ukraine doesn’t have enough troops to promptly counter-attack to restore the front line. That adds up slowly.
And if there was more engineering support, obstacles in the No-Man's Land between Russian and Ukrainian lines—or even just a lot more craters from dumb shells exploding in No-Man's Land—that would stop the small UGVs from getting close to the enemy positions:
The problem with the UGVs is their small size. World War I tanks were large to be able to maneuver through trenches, barbed wire, machine gun fire and shrapnel, and shell holes without being stopped. FFS, if your UGV is being stopped by grass it is too small to be a ground vehicle. …
Seriously, a little engineering support or even just some troop initiative will keep those small drones from getting close enough to detonate with any lethal effect.
Seriously, even if there are no physical barriers preventing small UGVs from approaching enemy positions, alert enemies should be able to destroy them with organic assets long before the UGVs lumber up close to shoot or detonate. I mean, at best if those UGVs can get close enough to destroy the enemy, the UGVs certainly won't be able to exploit through the enemy positions.
In addition to being armored, World War I tanks had to be long to cross trenches, shell craters, barbed wire, and other obstacles on the battlefield in order to push through the front line defenses.
NOTE: I made the image with the Substack capability.